Treat Uranium Mining Bill With Extreme Caution

February 28, 2008|By Nathan Lott

The clash of priorities that accompanied the unveiling of House and Senate versions of the state budget came as no shock, given gloomy revenue forecasts. But environmentalists found a big surprise hidden in the Senate budget.

Tucked into the more-than-500-page tome is language instructing the state Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, or DMME, to design a regulatory framework for the mining and milling of uranium.

Environmentalists are right to sound the alarm, given uranium mining's national track record of increased cancer rates, contaminated waterways and multimillion-dollar federal cleanups.

A statewide moratorium on uranium mining and milling has protected Virginians since 1982, when lawmakers determined that the threat posed to public health and the environment was too great to risk. Soon thereafter, the global price for uranium fell precipitously, and the industry dropped its push to mine deposits of the radioactive ore in the Virginia Piedmont.

The Virginia Senate resurrected the issue this year at the request of a single company, Virginia Uranium Inc., which is traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and hopes to open a mine in Pittsylvania County.

A flawed bill passed by the Senate, SB 525, would create a commission authorized to outsource a study on the effects of mining uranium and milling. More troubling, the commission is also authorized to draft the statutes necessary to lift the statewide moratorium.

By authorizing the commission to draft such statutes before a meaningful public review of the study, the bill goes too far. Despite eloquent references to scientific inquiry from both sides of the aisle, SB 525 suggests that a repeal of the moratorium - not an objective analysis - is the desired outcome of the bill.

The related language buried in the Senate budget further indicates that senators are indeed, begging, the question. The Senate budget includes no financing for the commission or study, based on the presupposition that Virginia Uranium Inc. will pick up the million-dollar tab. But the Senate budget does direct DMME to conduct its own internal effort to design a regulatory framework for the mining and milling of uranium.

Together, SB 525 and the Senate instructions to DMME would create a perfect storm, all but guaranteed to sink meaningful science and drown out public objections.

Rather than being informed by the commission, DMME's work will coincide with that of the commission. Thus, the commission and the agency will simultaneously debut a complex study, proposed statutes to allow mining and proposed regulations to oversee it. All this is to happen Dec. 15, 2009, just days before the 2010 General Assembly session, when legislators would be expected to take up the commission's findings.

Besides being wholly insufficient to guarantee high-quality outcomes, this timetable appears deliberately crafted to minimize public scrutiny. There will scarcely be enough time for busy legislators to review the study, let alone for scientific peer review or meaningful public input. This rush to judgment is all the more reckless when one considers that the radioactive waste that must be stored on-site at a uranium mine remains toxic for centuries.

Lott is executive director of the Virginia Conservation Network, a statewide coalition of more than 100 environmental nonprofits.